Vagabond Loafers
Vagabond Loafers is the 118th short subject starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959. Plot The Stooges are inept plumbers at Day and Nite Plumbers. Moe is busy reading "How to Be a Plumber" when the phone rings with a request to fix a leaky faucet at the home of the wealthy Norfleets (Emil Sitka and Symona Boniface). The leak happens to spring up while the Norfleets are throwing a dinner party to celebrate the acquisition of a $50,000 Van Brocklin painting. Moe struggles with the pipes in the basement while Shemp manages to trap himself inside a maze of pipes in the bathroom. Larry is assigned to finding the water cutoff and proceeds to dig up most of the lawn in an attempt to turn off the water. Shemp later surmises that the pipes fail to work properly because they are "clogged up with wires." Shemp and Moe proceed to remove the electrical system from the pipes and connect a water pipe to the freshly available pipe. The cook (Dudley Dickerson), who is in the kitchen trying to prepare an extravagant meal for the Norfleets, watches in bewilderment as the stove and chandelier gush water. "This house has sure gone crazy!", he exclaims. As the Norfleet's house transforms into Niagara Falls, two party guests named Mr. and Mrs. Allen (Kenneth MacDonald and Christine McIntyre) manage to swipe the prized Van Brocklin painting. The Stooges manage, however, to catch onto the Allen's scheme and retrieve the painting. When the grateful Norfleets offer the Stooges a handsome reward, Shemp says they don't want the reward, Moe asks him what Shemp is saying, Larry agrees with Shemp and tells Moe they don't want anymore money. Shemp claims it would put them in a higher tax bracket and Moe proceeds to bracket Shemp's head and destroys the pipes in process in anger. Notes *The title Vagabond Loafers parodies the romantic expression "vagabond lovers." *''Vagabond Loafers'' is a reworking of 1940's A Plumbing We Will Go, and would itself be remade in 1956 as Scheming Schemers. Shemp was teamed with comedian El Brendel for the non-Stooge film Pick a Peck of Plumbers (1944), which in itself was a remake of Sidney and Murray's Plumbing for Gold (1934). * The film marked the final appearances of two prolific Stooge supporting actors: Symona Boniface and Dudley Dickerson. Their faces would be seen in several more Stooge films, however, when footage featuring the actors was recycled for future productions. * This was the first Stooges short to start with a modified opening title card, which now had "Columbia Pictures Corporation Presents" at the top and a new logo for the Stooges (with one "o" on a different level from the other).This opening title card – with the same head shots of Shemp, Larry and Moe as on previous shorts – will remain in effect on all but the two 3-D films (Spooks! and Pardon My Backfire) the Stooges would make through the last short featuring footage of Shemp (Commotion on the Ocean) in 1956. Category:Three Stooges films